Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Teardown Reveals its Waterproof Guts

Drop your Samsung Galaxy Note 7 down the toilet and all you'll have to worry about is who was in there before you – its IP68 rating means it's fully waterproofed for up to 30 minutes in five feet of water. But how has Samsung managed to keep all those smart components safe from a soaking?

Gadget sacrificers iFixit have completed a full teardown of Samsung's new flagship phone and have shared the secrets of its construction in a new video.

In order to nab that IP68 rating, Samsung's put a sealing gasket around the headphone jack, filled the S Pen holster with glue and put several different layers of material protection around the speaker.

The teardown also reveals what many had suspected – the camera system onboard is identical to what you'd find in the preceding Galaxy S7 handset, as is the flash memory and gyroscope. A third camera is included for the iris scanner. Though slightly less reliable than the S7 Edge's battery, the Note 7's still trounces that found in the iPhone 6S Plus, while the S Pen is more responsive than either Apple's Pencil or Microsoft's Surface Pen.

As is ever the case in super-slim smart devices, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is awarded a low repairability rating, but the iFixit team does come away impressed with the comprehensive feature set and solid waterproofing.